Hello Alissa! Welcome to Steemit!

My name is Lizelle and I blog about gardening, my cats and The Modern Dragon which my husband and I run.

The best advice I've heard is to create original content. Just be you. There are already lots of people reposting 9gag images which is just filling the space and letting good posts fall in between the cracks.
Steemit is like when you first opened your FB account. You need to make friends. Don't follow for the sake of following because your home page will be full of things you don't enjoy. You can go through and mute someone if you're following them but don't want to see their content.

Comments are worth as much as an original post and people can upvote comments, so make it a good one. Also if someone is asking for help you can boost their return by upvoting comments.

Upvotes are not the same as likes on any other social media. It is you saying " I believe in this post enough to back it financially. "
Your voting power diminishes every time you vote and takes quite long to reload, so make it count.

If you like a post and want to easily find it again you can resteem it. That's the equivalent of sharing a post. No one can see if you have upvoted a post aside from going through a plugin/ app/ site. I resteemed an article about that on my page.

Also- everything you post will be on the blockchain forever. You can't delete posts (eek!) but you can edit them.

If you spot an offensive or just plain bad post you can flag it which pushes down the creator's reputation.

I have shared articles on my page that help with the basics. Head on over and have a look as I'm not sure which ones you would have seen already.

I'm looking forward to seeing your journey as an art teacher :)
Following you
Lizelle Hive account@moderndragon